Min­is­ter quiet on sub­com­mit­tee

A Cab­i­net sub­com­mit­tee formed amid fanfare last year to de­velop the WA coast has be­come a State se­cret, with the Gov­ern­ment re­fus­ing to re­veal what it has achieved or when it has held meet­ings.

Pro­pos­als to wake up sleepy Coral Bay, de­velop the Abrol­hos, and prise open the pris­tine South Coast were re­vealed by Premier Colin Bar­nett in June last year when he put Deputy Premier Kim Hames in charge of the coastal towns and set­tle­ments Cab­i­net sub­com­mit­tee.

Dr Hames set a 12-month tar­get to in­ves­ti­gate ac­cess, ser­vices, in­fra­struc­ture and land ten­ure is­sues with the aim of in­creas­ing tourism and ex­plor­ing new de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties along WA’s 13,000km coast­line.

“My KPI is to make sure that be­fore the end of the year I have pre­sented to Cab­i­net op­tions for all three sites, with de­tailed plan­ning of what we think we should do, what the costs might be of do­ing that and the timetable in which we would do it, ” Dr Hames said on June 13 last year.

Re­quests for an up­date on his “KPI” or a list of meet­ing dates and min­is­te­rial at­ten­dees were de­nied on the ba­sis of Cab­i­net con­fi­den­tial­ity.

Af­fected lo­cal gov­ern­ment author­i­ties are in the dark.

Greater Ger­ald­ton mayor Ian Car­pen­ter said while the Abrol­hos Is­lands came un­der the con­trol of the Depart­ment of Fish­eries, the coun­cil would “need to get in­volved at some stage”.

Esper­ance Shire pres­i­dent Mal­colm Heas­man said it had had “no di­a­logue as such” with the sub­com­mit­tee, but noted that Cape Le Grand Na­tional Park was un­der State con­trol.

Carnar­von Shire pres­i­dent Karl Bran­den­burg said mem­bers of the sub­com­mit­tee had vis­ited Coral Bay and de­cided to adopt in full the coun­cil’s set­tle­ment struc­ture plan.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Mark McGowan said the sub­com­mit­tee ap­peared to have more to do with vis­it­ing Dr Hames’ favourite fish­ing des­ti­na­tions, re­vealed in a 2011 in­ter­view to be Coral Bay, the Abrol­hos and Walpole, than im­proved gov­er­nance.